


A Shepherds' Walk

by MissouriMule



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, M/M, Multi, Pre-Reform Vulcan, Slow Build, Those Ugly Uniform Sweaters, Western, Young(er) James T. Kirk, Young(er) Spock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5782789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissouriMule/pseuds/MissouriMule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the year 2257 on a routine survey mission the starship USS Farragut was destroyed while in orbit of the star Eridani 40 A. The general consensus for the reason of its destruction was thought to be a fault in the programming of the ship's power distribution. Causing it to feed the energy of a ill-timed solar flare through its shields and into its power systems, resulting catastrophic failure of the antimatter containment systems and eventual warp core breech. The explosion threw a small shuttle craft, which had just returned from placing an experimental probe in orbit around the star, into the gravity of the system's third planet where it crashed onto its surface.</p><p>Of the one hundred and seven crew members aboard the Farragut and the three officers piloting the ill-fated shuttle, there was only one survivor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They were plummeting.

 

  
Klaxons were wailing in the air, the whine — like the cries of buzzards circling overhead to signal an imminent demise— adding to the roar of stuttering engines and distorted cries from the struggling computers. The consoles, sluggish and apathetic creatures that they had become, threw sparks and smoke to singe the hands that worked in an efficient sort of panic across their surfaces, pressing buttons and throwing switches with little effect.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Came the mantra, came the fervent plea, from the lips of the two frantic shuttle occupants in a perfectly comical sort of unison.

“There no way we're gonna make it!” The female officer hissed, the strands of hair that been shaken loose from her regulation bun singed and her eyes ablaze with panic.

“We’re gonna have to!” Her companion growled out through the astrid smoke. Repressing a coughing fit as it infiltrated his struggling lungs.

Incredibly alone in a shuttlecraft that was slowly disintegrating; its duranium hull buckling, engines failing, circuits melting from the inside out. And there was no help, no one coming to the rescue. And they were about to either A: burn up in an alien atmosphere without so much as a tearful “Goodbye, Mom — I love you.”, or B: crash unto some unforgiving surface with enough force to vaporize on impact.

Neither sounded anywhere near the definition of appealing, but hell if they could stop it.

The controls groaned at every order, sometimes needing to be sent through auxiliary after secondary auxiliary and back to main before responding. Shaving precious seconds off their window of opportunity but Lieutenant James T. Kirk never thought he would have thanked every deity, and then some, for Starfleet’s borderline redundancy till he was spinning out of control in a damaged shuttle.

“C’mon you bitch!” He shouted, slamming a fist into an unresponsive control panel.

Ensign Samantha (Battle? Boulder? Jim couldn’t remember her last name to save his own soul.) out a choked sob but didn’t falter as she scrambled her own fingers over the altitude controls, hopelessly level out the falling shuttle as it sped faster and faster in the planet gravitational pull.

She was just an Ensign, just a science minion, just out here to re-catalogue stars with some shiny new sensor probes. She was trained for this, sure as rain in April she was, but she’d had never experienced it. Never thought it would happen to her. Certainly not here. Not too far away from Sol and certainly not out in the boonies, Andoria was just a stone’s throw over yonder for god sakes. This wasn’t uncharted space for the love of all that’s holy where people disappear or get turned into squid.

Not this, never thought an assignment to a Constitution-class starship would end up like this, never had she even dreamed this.

Jim felt bad for her, hell he felt bad for himself, but he only felt bad for second; it could wait. Avoiding death by burning up in the atmosphere of some god forsaken backwater planet, or smashing into said planet at an unsatisfactory rate of speed was more immediate.

“Shit! The hull is past its tolerances! Two-thousand, five-hundred degrees and climbing!” She reported through gritted teeth as tears streaked down her face, smearing the makeup she’d worked so hard on this morning.

Some calm, collected part of Jim’s brain said “Fuck this shit.” and went to bed; the part of him freaking out and running around with its head on fire remained, tapered by nothing more than his insane notion that they might survive this yet. Even with parts of the shuttle were peeling off like old lead paint chips as took a near nosedive towards the planet's surface, the heavy atmosphere rattling the little shuttle like maraca, some part of him laughably thought they might survive.

Jim grunted as a particularly big shake threw him forward, the safety harness knocking the smoke filled air out of his lungs.

He gasped at the poisoned air and struggled to keep up the good fight, even with his vision growing fuzzy around the edges.

Samantha needed him. She didn’t deserve this, she didn’t deserve to die like this. Jim really could give to shits about himself at this point; hell, they’d already lost Marty, the officer’s smoldering corpse rolling around like bottles in the bed of a pickup truck because he had been dumb enough to unbuckle and come up front to watch the Farragut explode, he would not lose Samantha. Not on a fucking routine mission to test out a little probe.

But it wasn’t routine anymore was it? The USS Farragut had blown the fuck up; 40 Eridani A, that insignifiant main-sequence dwarf, threw a little solar flare and Farragut lit up like a firework, the shock wave throwing Marty into a wall and hurling the little, already brutalized, shuttle into the gravitational pull of the star’s third planet.

God knows what the hell happened, the flare had shaken the the little shuttle something fierce yeah, they had been scared for a moment the shields would buckle, but they had weathered the storm. Why did the Farragut go up like fucking Federation Day?! Nothing made any sense.

“Fuck...” Jim hissed out weakly as he smashed his mostly unresponsive fingers into even more unresponsive buttons.

The grav plating and what functioning internal dampeners both decided to fail at that moment, wrenching Jim up in his seat and putting his stomach in his mouth, as if he didn’t feel nauseous enough. Marty’s corpse tumbling through the air is a morbid sort of ballet, whirling into Jimmy’s peripheral vision before beating against the ceiling and bouncing back into the haze.

Samantha had stopped sobbing, Jim couldn’t hear her at all actually even though she was sitting right beside him. But he couldn’t think about that too hard, gotta get the shuttle's nose up, gotta slow down, make the thrusters work even though he’s pretty sure one of the engines is gone. Can’t waste any precious, fading consciousness on Samantha right now, he’s gotta save her first.

“C’mon.” The plea came out a harsh whisper, nothing but adrenaline keeping his eyes open at this point.

“C’moonuh.” He slurred, his hands about as coordinated as a dying horse as he fought with the altitude controls and simultaneously tried to eject the fuel tanks before they exploded.

He convulsed, wracked with heavy coughs that felt as if he was trying to force his lungs up and out of his trachea, and slammed his fists heavily down on the console.

Suddenly something beeped, warped and shrill, and the shuttle jerked up, her engines giving a final kick as she ejected her fuel tanks. The tanks themselves took enough of the thruster exhaust to finally blow, exploding above the shuttle’s rear end and the force enough to send her flipping like a coin towards the surface. No longer at any sort of angle, just a sheer drop down to certain doom.

Jim threw up about a half-second into it, maybe enough in his right mind to turn his head so he didn’t hurl all over the console, but he couldn’t tell which way was up at the moment; his body too busy trying to find air that wasn’t laden with smoke to hold back this morning’s omelette.

Marty smashed into the back of his chair, the ceiling, then the console; more buttons responding with their distorted bleeps.

And Jim… Jim was just trying to keep his head up. His numb fingers somehow finding a death grip on the edge of his seat and his eyes clenched against the G-forces, against the nausea, against the smoke that burned.

It was mercy then, when he finally blacked out. The sweetest of mercies.


	2. Chapter 2

It was nearly sunset, the red solar disc burning low across the vast, empty expanse of horizon.

  
  


Bleeding its own color into the sky; turning all the same burnt hue of oranges that the desert claimed. Making the vaults of heaven and the stretches of arid land all one great endless expanse.

The sky itself bore the wounds of the igen-gellar, deep twisting fingers of light and blood that withered across its face. These strains of green and yellow light bounced in a slow tumble, flaring brighter and dimmer at unpredictable intervals and turning the heavens into one magnificent festival of color. 

An omen maybe; whether or ill or fair Spock did not know, but it was a striking performance.

He sat on the back of a kenel, head turned upward to watch the show, casually blowing strands of hair away when the westerly winds choose to buffet his bangs into his eyes. 

He needed a haircut, and probably a shave, and most certainly a bath.

Around him rose the lips of the great bowl of stone and sand he’d taken refuge in; cutting sharply into the vast, rolling foothills of the L’langon Mountains and managing guard him and his herd from the more perilous daytime temperatures.

Rya, the kenel, hung her head low, taking in the still heavy air into her lungs with deep, slow breaths. Spock shifted in the saddle, rolling gently as the kenel shifted her weight from one five toed foot to the other, kicking up dust with each great exhale from her four nostrils.

Maybe searching the dirt for a scrap of living scrub that the sham’amiilar had not yet found, or looking for minerals hidden in the dust, he couldn't say but he let her have her head and wander while he leaned back in the saddle lazily. 

When Rya breathed in the result of her actions, a cloud of fine orange particles, she snorted, jerking her head up and startling her contemplative rider while she sneezed violently and repeatedly.

Spock patted her great neck with a mild sympathy, taking in his own deep and sighing breath as he turned back to his charges.

Seventy-one head of sham’amii, with most lying down in the shade of rock outcroppings and brush they had deemed inedible or meandering about each other. Grunting and barking as they went in greeting to their kin and looking for any scrap of foliage, living or dead, left in the well searched ground.

He counted calves (Though they were not quite calves anymore.) out of habit with each pass of his eye and watched for signs of the le-matya or nor-sehlat that might prey upon them. 

Though the bulls and older cows who had stationed themselves on the highest of the rocks—  squinting against the setting sun and warding off the more persistent biting flies with irritable head shaking— might have more idea than he if something was afoot.

He had started out with a hundred some of the beasts at Ozhidar’Kahr, a relatively small settlement clinging to the underside L’langon Mountains and one of the depots with which the trader’s road from Dahhana’Kahr had once passed through. Though it had long ago rerouted when the canyon leading to Ozhidar’Kahr from the south had collapsed some six hundred and fifty years ago. 

Unremarkable save the fact it was one of the few places in Khomi that had suitable graze land, set as high as it was from the arid plains and it’s mountainous guardians funneling the tail end of the sparse rains to its hillsides, and bred animals with thick and dark coats. 

The wool of Ozhidar’Kahr bred sham’amiilar were naturally smokey in color, like greying hair or charred wood, and while it made them valuable, it also made them delicate creatures (comparatively) that did not take well to excessive heat or travel. The sun beating down on their backs mercilessly. 

Some had been lost to sandstorms, others taken by predators in the night, but none had fallen from exhaustion or dehydration yet. Whether or luck or skill had more to due with the matter he did not know.

He had in fact made the run from Ozhidar’Kahr to Shi’Kahr twice already, and knew the trail well — a jealously guarded path plotted by generations of shepherds before him— but this was the first time he’d walked it alone. And he certainly had not attempted such a journey alone on propose.

On his very first push as a new shepherd he had accompanied two veteran shepherds, Sepak and Rekan, who had taught him this winding road. Trekking a path through oases and around dead zones, avoiding border patrols and active mines.

On his second he had went with Rekan alone as Sepak had only recently lost his left hand to a malfunctioning piece of farm equipment. 

Now on his third Sepak had declined to join as he was waiting for a machinist to make alterations to his hook but Rekan had been quite eager to make the run again. He should be here now but, he was lost; he laid somewhere at the bottom of a gorge, his bones being gnawed clean by aylaklar.

And it had been Rekan’s own doing much to Spock grief on the matter. He had behaved like a fool, and fell to his death along with his kenel because he had been too stubborn and sentimental to realize the animal had no legs for work anymore. Ladok’s Fingers aylaks was always a treacherous stretch of trail, a narrow ledge skirting the edge of a deep canyon for mat’drihlar, but it could be walked easily if one were to take care and not be stupid enough to take an aging kenel onto it. 

Who of course would stumble, and drag his rider down with him. Screaming.

This had cost Rekan his life; cost Rekan’s wife a husband and his children a father; it had cost Spock his friend and now it might cost Spock his job.

Even though Spock thought he had done well making it halfway with over seventy percent of his herd intact, most were considered successful if they managed with sixty percent this this far and especially so alone. However, he still had some four hundred and fifty mat’drihlar to cover. And the last stretch, up and over the lip of the L’langon mountains, over the stretch of wasteland that surrounded Mount Tar’Hana, was always the hardest. The violital and volcanic land would take as much blood as it could drink and then some.

But no unregistered merchant could take the safer trading roads. This was his only path.

He did not expect to get to Shi’Kahr with even half the remaining animals in sellable condition, and Teknat— the man in who owned these sham’amiilar and paid Spock’s wage— would not be pleased with that. No, not at all.

Best case scenario he’d see his pay cut by half. Worst he wouldn’t be paid at all, and maybe, possibly, slandered so no other would hire him. Teknat had always been a vengeful, spiteful man.

So he wished Rekan was still with him as much as he damned the man; him or at least someone with enough experience to map the direction of a lava flow at a glance, or know when a sandstorm was coming hours before it hit, because Spock himself had yet to even gain an finger length towards these things in the four years he’d been a shepherd and, at times, he doubted he ever would. 

Many of the other shepherds said he had the instincts of a brain dead aylak; he had tried to make up for it of course, with common sense, hard work — with logic even— but the others still found him lacking in predicting when a cow would give birth or where an oasis might lay hiding.

He sighed again, let himself wallow in his predicament for the moment as no one was here to see him do it— a bad habit he’d developed even sense he left his father’s house— rolled his shoulders and let himself fall forward onto Rya’s neck. Resting his forehead against the muscular arch of her nape and letting his shoulders completely relax, the reins hanging loosely in his fingers.

It would be time to move soon, he knew that much; as soon as the sun fell below the horizon he would have stir the herd— as much as they would protest— and press on. Continue leading them to the fertile, mountain guarded meadows before the gates of hell — then, of course, straight into the mouth of hell itself.

Rya’s ears had swiveled back to listen to him; her dark, fathomless eyes considering the Vulcan on her back with a long suffering exasperation. Spock patted a hand abently against her neck, still watching the dancing lights of the igen-gellar out of the corner of his eye and debating if he should take one of the last kaasa jam tarts from the saddlebags to treat himself before night fall.

They’d be stale, but comforting.

Suddenly Rya startled, swinging her neck about and dislodging her rider’s head — who grunted irritably— from his very comfortable position as she looked to the sky, her ears pricked.

Spock straightened, taking stock of his mount who was now staring at the heavens with great interest. Odd indeed, she had never had much care for the affairs of what she could not eat or tread upon but now she watched the sky with rapt interest. Ignoring her rider even when he tugged on the reins and tapped her flank with his heel.

When Spock followed her intent gaze he saw nothing but the twisting ribbons of the igen-gellar for a long moment, then poking out of a streak of yellow there sat a thread of brilliance among the faded hues. Growing steadily brighter, a tail stretching out behind it as it moved across the sky. Blazing as if it were a star knocked from the vast chambers of night; a god’s coin falling to the floor of his palace.

Rya let out a warning rumble, then there was a great crack that spread about the landscape in deafening echoes.

The sham’amiilar bellowed nervously, startled and on their feet; all primed to panic as they stamped their hooves in defiance and clustered together. The clattering of the animals’ horns knocking together a fitting backdrop to the sharp whine building in the air as the star continued to fall.

Spock held tight to Rya’s reins, the leather groaned in his grip, and it let out another thunderous noise, casting off fiery sparks and bouncing in the air as if it were trying to rise again. Scattering to mingle among the faint stars of twilight before snuffing out.

It skipped thrice more, each time with a crack to deafen even a warlord’s cannon and the wails of sham’amiilar its chorus, before it plummeted into the hills. Meeting solid ground with a crash forceful enough to rattle the sand and bounce pebbles. 

Rya stumbled, then threw her head back and roared as the impact shook the land; trying to turn and flee as she reared up onto her hind legs. Spock fought with her, squeezing her flanks tight between his thighs and pulling her reins taught so that he wouldn’t be thrown unto the packed earth below.

She twisted, her feet clawing at the air as if to banish some unseen foe, and he felt himself slide far down the seat of the saddle, the edge of his ass teetering on the saddles lip. Should he have not be strapped to the saddle at the knees and calves, he would of fallen.

“Whoa, whoa!”

He heaved, pushing forward against gravity and against his mount’s will, setting his feet as firmly into the stirrups as his strength would allow and righting his posture. Rya whined, the bit pulling at her lips as she fought against him, falling back onto the dirt petulantly.

Sham’amiilar had spooked all about them, running in tight clusters and hopping on top of tall rocks with all the agility they would never show till moments like these. Baying and bellowing as they went. And somewhere in struggle with his kenel Spock spared a moment to hope, maybe possibly a prayer, that they would not flee into the desert and out of his reach.

“Hold! Easy, easy,  _ easy _ .” Spock hissed at his mount as she backed up, still throwing her head nervously and picking up her feet as if the ground burned.

She rumbled before finally stopping her thrashing. Standing tense and vocalizing lowly as Spock ran stroked a hand up and down her neck, running neck to ears in rapid moments while he whispered to her softly.

“Hush now. Be easy. Be gentle.” Though he was sure his own voice trembled as he looked towards where the star had fallen, it was not even a mat’drih away. 

Over a few rolling hills of red earth and dried grasses where it tainted the sky an unnatural sort of blue-ish light and smoke as black as obsidian. The dark tindrel rising higher into the sky than any of the skeletal desert rocks that forced their way up from the land’s flesh like fractured bones.

Spock breathes and steadies himself; his heart thrumming in his flanks like the drums on the eve of Rumarie, with the sound of the blood it set pounding through his ears more deafening than the noise the star had made when it fell.

All around him, mostly  _ above _ him, came the frightened rumbles of sham’amii. They skittered about in clusters, indecisive as the were jumping from group to group, scattering stones at the went. Some bouncing off Rya’s thick hide, others meeting Spock’s shoulders, his thighs, and one, his head.

He did not relish the prospect of coaxing each animal down from their respective perches; prone as they were to jumping back up once his back was turned.

He turns and searches among the rumbling animals; counts the dominant bulls, counts the dominant cows and even takes the time to find the animals who possess some unique physical quality about them. He counts them, and strangely, finds each animal he’s looking for.

If an animal has run into the scrubland or deeper into the foothills in fear they will turn back, they will find the herd again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spock is a cowboy! Sorta, mostly, pretty much. No hat though. Tsk tsk.
> 
> Vulcan words and terms:
> 
> Igen-gellar - An aurora. Literally sky lights. Technically you cannot see auroras in any sort of sunlight but I'm taking liberties with a different atmosphere and a different sun here.
> 
> Kenel - a domestic horse like animal. My opinion of them being stocky, heavy creatures with feet instead of hooves, thick hides covered in very short and fine hair without a mane and small horn like protrusions covered in skin and over their eyes, similar to okapi.
> 
> Sham'amii(lar)- a domestic animal similar to a cow, produces milk, meat and fine wool. Smaller than Terran cattle, bare undersides with a heavy coat atop their backs and shoulders that groups into thick mats. Harp shaped horns and the males have a prominent dewlap. 
> 
> Le-matya - a vicious and carnivorous therapsid, is secretes poison from two large dewclaws on it's front paws.
> 
> Nor-sehlat - a large, bear like carnivore with extremely large front canines.
> 
> Ozhidar'Kahr - made up town in the country of Khomi. Literally "fingerprint" city.
> 
> L’langon Mountains - a large, y shaped mountain chain that stretches across most of bottom half the continent Na'Nam.
> 
> Dahhana’Kahr - the capital of Khomi. 
> 
> Khomi - a country known for it's harsh volcanic wastes, earthquakes and mines.
> 
> Shi’Kahr - the capital of Shial.
> 
> Aylak(lar) - small lizard like creature with two tails, scavenger.
> 
> Ladok’s Fingers - made up gorge.
> 
> Mat'drih(lar) - a unit of measurement equivalent to a kilometer 
> 
> Lar - denotes plural.


	3. Chapter 3

‘ _It burns_ .’

 

That’s the first thought as Jim regains consciousness. The second; ‘ _It hurts_.’

Because it did hurt; it burned, it throbbed, it ached in places he hadn’t known could ache. And his head was swimming in it, a cottony fog of pain so intolerable his body and mind felt like shutting down.

He coughs, a wretched hacking sound from the pit of his lungs that turns to quick deep billows. He can’t breathe. He has to find some kind of air.

He tries to stand, but two things stand in his way. One, his legs completely refuse to work properly and two, the safety harness must be jammed because it hasn’t retracted yet. Or the computers are so completely and utterly fried they can’t get the command to his chair that the shuttle has come to a very abrupt stop…

Oh, that’s right. He’s in a shuttle, or more specifically, his tethered to the wreckage of a shuttle.

The cabin is hazy with smoke or he’s got enough brain damage his vision has been reduced to utter shit, he can’t see a damn thing like this.

Too dark, too much smoke, too many thunderclouds in his brain stealing away his concentration. But hell, at least he isn’t dead. Even if he can’t figure out how he’s still alive, he’s still damn well alive...

‘ _SAMANTHA!’_

He jerks, tries to stand again because with the realization that one of his crew — what a thought to, _his crew_ — is supposed to be in the seat beside him, and forgets he’s still lashed to the chair.

“Dam—” His curse broken off by hoarse coughing, so much damn _smoke_.

His hands are clumsy, his thoughts even more so. Just a jumbled collection of needs, wants and “has to”s that barely make any sense as he tries to dredge up the necessary information from the workings of his shaken mind to work the manual release on his harness.

There is clattering, a confoundedly over complicated clasp set in the most awkward of places being shaken from his fingers by his own tremors and coughs, and mumbled cursing when his lungs will allow it. But finally it gives and he lurches out of his seat, blindly groping in the near darkness of the smoke filled cabin.

The only light to guide him is maybe one or two working emergency lights and a faint red glow that spills in from every other fracture in the hull, but he finds her. A warm body and, by some mercy, a _breathing_ body. As shallow as those movements were, maybe illusions of hope caused by whatever head trauma he’s suffered, but he needs that hope right now.

She doesn’t react when he tries to call to her or when he shakes her. He needs to get her out of here, _he_ needs to get out of here, before they both suffocate. Their only salvation so far the fact the hull had decided to crack open like a boiled egg, letting some of the smoke escape.

He shimmies his hands across her body, dropping to his knees while he searching for the clasp on her harness, her own tether having failed to release.

He stumbles for a moment, his fingers jerking away when he hits something wet, warm, leaving trails of thick liquid on his hands. He doesn’t want to think about that right now, he can’t think about that right now, but it sticks like a burr in the back of his skull.

He had to leave nothing but the mantra in his head: Samantha then escape hatch, nothing more for productivity’s sake. Before his adrenaline ran out.

His fingers, wet and slick, find the clasp. And this one comes easier, remarkably so for how much his hands shake, and he’s managed to somehow get on his toes, still in a crouch, wrap his arms around her waist and _heave_.

‘ _Bad idea. Bad fucking idea._ ’ He thinks as he groans, managing to stand with her small, fragile body over her shoulder but instantly regretting every decision he’s ever made as his oxygen deprived muscles scream in protest.

He very nearly falls backward, the momentum of swinging her up almost overtaking him. Coughing because he tried to pant and that didn’t work out for him at all, and bracing himself for a second to make the world stop spinning.

Then he’s moving forward, gripping at the body hung over his shoulder with everything he has and plunging blindly in what he thinks is the direction of the hatch.

He stumbles over something in the haze, something that flops and gives and is still half warm. He can’t bother with that now, but he thinks in his delirium he actually mumbles “Sorry,”.

‘ _God damnit, Marty— You fucking dumb bast—_ ’ The thought is cut off in his slams into the shuttle wall with enough force to nearly put him on his knees.

He reaches one hand out blindly, when his head clears from the impact as much as it’s able, tracing the lines of the hull for the door handle. He knows these shuttles inside and out, and it’s just a few more seconds of groping, pulling up schematics in his head at a snail's pace, till he finds the door.

He grips the handle and twists, already guessing the circuits are shot and just bypassing the control panel all together, and it groans at him; leaver turning a half circle before jamming.

He jerks his arm, swaying with the weight of the body on his shoulders, but it doesn’t give. He throws his whole body against, an ill advised thing to do as brings him to a knee, hard and coughing, with no effect.

“You fu— “ Broken by a cough, “ —ing who—” more coughing, “ —ore.”

He won’t fucking die like this. He survived a shuttle crash from orbit onto an unexplored planet and he will not fucking die because the fucking shuttle door decided it was going to fuck him.

Samantha falls off his shoulder in a heap, as delicate a heap as he can manage while he scrambles for the overrides. Digging his nails into the seams when the panel controls predictably to not respond and pulling. He manages to rip out a nail as pries the panel off, hissing and spitting.

He reaches in and gropes, fingering wires while the image of the panel’s inner workings blurs and refocuses in his head. He is shocked, multiple times, and when he can no longer take it he has to jerk away his wounded hand and clutch it, digits trembling, to his chest.

He growls, squeezing his fist tight and pushing his forehead against the unforgiving wall before forcing his fingers to open and shoving his hand back into the open maw of unidentified wires and failing circuits.

He removes the auxiliary power cable, prying it out with bloody fingers and casting it aside. Next come the portal switches, and he twists and strains his arm into the panel to reach. His fingertips, wet and slick, just brush them and no matter how much he strains and twists, his skin on his wrists scraping and peeling from friction against the panel lip, he just can’t quite catch them.

“God fuc—” Coughing, hacking. “ —king dam—” Hacking and coughing.

Ideas, like most of the best things in life, come on suddenly with little warning. He grips the sleeve of his golden uniform sweater, finding it already tattered and frayed, and rips it further. Shrugging off the fabric and tearing off a small strip with his teeth, he wraps the fragment around two of his fingertips as tightly as possible and reaches back into the panel.

He strains, sweats, and even growls something low raspy and mostly unidentifiable in the pit of his throat before the added traction and slight length increase finally catches the switch.

There is a groan added to the ever growing, and ever ominous, billowing of fire and smoke. A high pitched shriek of metal relenting unhappily and a sudden appearance of bright and red tinted light spilling through a newly made crack. Quickly snuffed out as smoke finds its new escape route.

He quickly jumps to his feet, wriggling eight fingers into the crack and setting two thumbs against the door. Bracing and heaving with all the strength he can gather, the heels of his boots trying to slip against the shuttle floor, and the crack begins to reluctantly widen with ever growing groans of distress.

When his efforts have give him an opening about half a meter in length he falls back to his knees and grapples for Samantha as the world begins to spin. Wrapping his arms around her torso he lifts her up, holding the limp body close to his chest as he strains towards the light. Her head rolls and flops on her neck like a broken toy, and Kirk’s vision blacks out for a moment as wiggles through the small opening. He pitches forward as consciousness wanes, his brain losing control of his body and he falls head first out the shuttle door.

If it is gravity, if it is his regaining motor control, if it is luck he does not know but he manages to hit the impact hardened dirt tumbling. Samantha still a flopping rag doll in his arms though he manages to keep hold of her as he rolls once and lands in a sprawl. The ground around him blackened and tilled, laden with debris and shrapnel that sticks up like fangs.

He convulses, coughing and hacking and curling into himself and the body he holds. The air tastes strange, but it’s air all the same and he heaves in deep filling breaths in between coughs. Sobriety is catching up with him, slowly but gaining speed as more and more oxygen parades it way into his system.

He forces himself to sit upright, still puffing out a steady stream of little coughs, and adjusts his grip around Samantha as he tries to remember how to make his legs work properly.

Managing to twist unto his knees he begins shuffling away from the shuttle, smoke still obscuring his vision and dragging Samantha along. The ground is hard, dusty, and red like Martian soil, digging into his knees through his uniform trousers. His neck and shoulders hurt from the landing, and the burns on his fingers are starting to make themselves known.

He makes it onto his feet and heaves her up, gaining speed as he pulls her away from the wreckage. Her heels dragging in the sandy dirt, leaving shallow treads, and his breathing coming out labored.

The planet is habitable, he remembers that vaguely from the reports on this system. A little less than optimal, but habitable and supporting a humanoid population just making it’s way into its industrial era from the accounts of Andorian scout ships that would occasionally buzz by.

The higher than Earth normal gravity is already making his knees shake, and he can’t seem to get enough air despite having gotten away from the smoke. He manages to drag Samantha about six yards on adrenaline before he has to stop, collapsing back to his knees with Samantha in his lap.

He lays her out carefully on the dirt, pressing an ear to her chest to find her shallow breath. When he sits back up he’s dizzy and there is blood on his face that’s not his. Black spots dance in front of his eyes.

In the fading light Jim can make out a shallow gash on her side, oozing blood and turning her blue uniform sweater purple. He struggles out of his own, wrestling it over his head and leaving him breathless, so he can press it to her side.

She doesn’t stir and he needs to find the first aid kit. He doesn’t think the bleeding is too bad but he doesn’t know what else is wrong with her and bandages and a protoplaser would help.

He shakes his swimming head, uses her arm as dead weight to help press the fabric to the wound and tries to stand; managing to topple forward for his trouble and nearly collapsing on top of her.

His vision starts to fade and he sways but refuses to fall face first on the dusty soil and just give in; he’s got a mission, a purpose.

He struggles to his feet, staring down hard at the small form of the ensign at his feet as the ground seems to turn and sway around him, he feels like he’s falling, before stumbling in the direction of the crash.

The shuttle has her nose in the dirt and tail angled up, a ridge of soil covering her front window,  and her nacelles are completely ripped away. Somewhere inside it continues crackle and spark irritably, some processes still humming despite the lack of fuel. Something to be said of Terran craftsmanship if anything can be said.

Smoke pours out of the wedged hatch, a deep fracture on the top of the hull and from several unknown sources. It’s an astrid, vile and thick smoke the burns the eyes every time the wind blows it in his direction. And there is a hellish heat coming off it it, baking the already stuffy and dry air.

Onward he goes, tripping over bits of shrapnel and ground up boulders as he singlemindedly heads back into the little oven the shuttle has become. Gotta get that crash kit, bandages, protoplasers, signal beacon, rations, water and blankets all wrapped up in a two by two little ingloriously heavy parcel.

They used to joke at the Academy and call it the Ball and Chain. Heavy, impractical, a little bit redundant but it usually got the job done.

He takes a death breath of the burnt air, steadying himself and his aching head before heaving himself up through the hatch and into the smoky haze.

-

Jim thinks he hates this planet. There is sweat running down his back and pooling the the crack of his ass even though the sun is long gone. The air is thin, but a heavy weight on his shoulders, and tastes like burnt rubber. He’s got dust, and sand, and god know what else plastered to every damp surface on his skin and it’s working its merry way into every tiny crack on his body with a vengeance.

Actually, Jim is sure he fucking hates this planet. He hates it more than he’s ever hated anything.

More than Sam when he busted his brand new bike when he was ten; more than his dad when he wouldn’t let him got to Tim’s party even though he was sixteen; more than his Biology teacher — whose name he’s effectively blocked from his memory— in eleventh grade; more than the dodgy brakes on his first hoverbike; more than he _ever_ hated the Kobayashi Maru.

Jim hates this fucking backwater, shithole of a planet as he stares down at the form of Samantha. Her heart beat still so slow, the tiny blips on the monitoring device on her chest the only indication she’s really alive, and red is already starting to seep through her bandages.

Jim spits out a curse and drags the already ravaged first aid kit before him.

He sits on his heels, digging out more coagulants, bandages and a stitch kit cause the protoplaser was a fucking toy made for some housewife who might keep in it a closet for when little Tommy scraped his knee falling of his hover scooter.

Where the hell was a doctor, with a _real_ medical tricorder and a _real_ protoplaser, when you needed one?

He has to stop for a moment, to cough and try to hack out whatever sooty film is trying to burn its way out of his lungs, and his eyes water. Tears leaving tracks in the dust on his cheeks.

And they don’t stop coming as he fumbles around the tools and gently as possible tries to peel away the bandages he’d wrapped so clumsily around the wound. They land on his hands, the once sterile bandages, Samantha’s torso and blurr his sight.

Of course all it takes is one particularly bad coughing fit to turn him into a sniveling idiot, now that the adrenaline ran out and he can feel every bruise and cut and fracture clamouring for attention in the most rude and inconsiderate of ways. He’s tired.

He spares and moment to wipe his eyes with a dusty sleeve, flinching when it forces more particulates past his eyelashes and blinks to the sky.

Green and white and yellow lights, warping and snapping back to some unheard beat. It was pretty and Jim could confess he’d never seen an aurora quite like it.

He’d been up north — Iceland— with a few other cadets; got drunk, fell in love with the scenery, fell in love with a girl for about four days and one night sat flat on his back dazed, staring at the sky while the show of a lifetime played out above his head. He’d even seen an aurora from space once, riding a shuttle to Luna, pressed up against the window by the skinny (And deceptively strong.) teenager in the aisle seat he’d watched it curl around the little blue marble like a set of trembling fingers.

Never seen one like this though, thin whip streaks of color almost swirling around each other, pushing and pulling like tides. No waterfalls or rivers, just fractures and hairline cracks spreading out across the sky slow as molasses. This very alien atmosphere playing out the byproduct of that ill-fated solarflare in its own beautiful way.

Jim… Jim hates this planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could never find any mention of dermal regenerators pre-TNG era so now we have to deal with protoplasers which at least appeared in the early TOS movies. Say it three times fast. I dare you.


	4. Chapter 4

He wasn’t sure why he’d come.

 

Maybe it was the fact he had a good idea one of the younger, more independent, bulls had run off in this direction. Maybe it was because none of the herd was inclined to move anywhere tonight, especially since the star had fallen straight into their intended path.

Or, more likely, he was just being foolishly curious.

He had always been prone to such things. Once he had wandered, quite purposefully now that he thinks back on it, from his Father’s sight chasing after a one tailed aylak and managed to get himself lost overnight in the scrub forest.

Less than a month later— he had always been a stubborn child— he had been crawling under one of the sheds that hugged the walls of his father’s estate in Shi’Kahr, even though he’d been explicitly told not to, and come face to face with a k’karee. He’d escaped without being bitten or spit upon but he had been shaken enough to spend the next few months as far away from those sheds as possible.

He’d been lucky both those times, truly.

Lucky that a le-matya or a nor-sehlat hadn’t caught his scent while he unwittingly plunged deeper into the wilderness that day he accompanied his father on a routine visit to the fields. Lucky it had been the dry season when he decided he was going go to crawl under the sheds— for nothing more than the sake of seeing what was there— so that the k’karee hiding there had been too sluggish upon being stirred from its hibernation to strike.

And the gods only knew why he continued to test his luck, satisfy a useless curiosity that would one day kill him. He knew better, and he was still inching ever closer to the crash site.

Ducking behind boulders and scrub, dashing through shadows and casting wary glances over his shoulder as he neared his destination. He’d tied Rya and left her with the sham’amiilar— she being no eager go near the star than they were— and set off into the hills without her. He was still thankful he did, should something happen she’d eventually break her tie and move on. Head back to Shi’Kahr without him, she probably knew the way back better than he did.

She was a fine animal, of well bred stock and still young. One of the few things he’d had the courage or the shame to take with him when he left his father’s house in disgrace. She’d find someone to feed her and rub her neck just so; no one in their right mind would exile her to pull carts till her back broke or walk her to the slaughter house. Maybe someone would note the brand on her shoulder and return her to his father even, as unlikely as that outcome was.

That was worst case scenario, of course. Spock did plan on coming back for her.

The air was thick with an astrid smell, like the metal refineries he had slaved at when he’d first left home, burned and black, stinging his throat and nose. It smelled like fire too, and as he approached he could hear the sounds of crackling flames and groaning metal.

A cloud of smoke rising into the air and blocking out the stars, its underside lit with a light he’d watched turn from white, to blue, to orange, to red for the all the time it had been in his vision.

One more hill to climb and he’d see the source of it.

Up he scrambled, the soil loose and giving under his feet as he worked his way up on all fours and low to the ground. Digging his fingers into the red dirt and feeling it shift what filth was already under his nails to make room.

Near the top he paused, just breathing. He couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of flames, the billowing of smoke, or his own heart thrumming in his chest. Not a clue to what might lie over the ridge.

His hand found the el’ru-pohshayek at his hip, a bulky two barreled thing meant to take down a nor-sehat in one well placed shot, and he rested an open palm against the grip to steady himself. One thing had to be said for growing up in a military home, he was well trained in the arts of war and he had always been a particularly excellent shot.

He hunkers down at the top of the hill, flat on his belly and taking in the sight below as both brows climb to his hairline.

In a blackened crater sits an object, a large, strange and very damaged object. It’s shiny, metallic and covered in more cracks than Spock can take the time to count. Smoke pours out of every crevice while dying flames peak out from its innards.

Its shape is odd; all sharp edges like those strange houses he’d seen as a boy on the shores of the Thanar Sea, but turned on its side and elongated. Or maybe a covered, oversized version of the sleds illustrated in the book about the northern wastes that his Uncle Silek had gifted to him.

Though the nomadic tribes that roamed those frozen lands, as far as Spock knew, did not make their sleds out of such metal. And why a giant metal sled would have fallen from the sky, Spock could not say.

‘ _Perhaps a god was too exuberant while driving it, and slipped over the edges of heaven._ ’ He muses, half in jest and half serious.

To rapt on the smouldering wreck Spock did not notice, a first, the crouched figure set some ways away from the wreck. He watches, fingering his weapon in case they are not at all friendly and want to keep the sky-sled all to themselves.

The figure has a torch it seems, at least Spock can only assume it’s a torch, though its light is abnormally bright for its size and steady, and leans over something.

‘ _No, someone_ .’ Another person lying down in the dirt and unmoving. ‘ _That one is hurt?_ ’ He thinks, craning his neck and straining his eyes against the gloom.

T’Khut has not made her way over the horizon yet, and will not till early morning given the time of year, so there is nothing but starlight to illuminate the night. Along with the strange torch of the moving figure, who swings it about so fiercely Spock is sure it will go out.

The man with the torch stands, it looks like a man, a little short but too broad to be a woman, and hobbles over to the wreck. He is limping heavily, leaving great drags behind him in the dusty soil, and clutching himself with his free hand.

The man stands for a moment, batting away smoke, and if Spock strains he can hear him coughing over the crackle of flames, before he picks something off the ground and reaches it into the fire. When he pulls it away it is ablaze and retreats back to the injured figure. Working with the burning article on the ground.

‘ _If he wishes a fire, why does he not use his torch?_ ’ Spock thinks he should leave as well, no use provoking a strange, injured man. Rya was waiting for him, the sham’amiilar were waiting for him, he had a journey to complete and he was wasting starlight.

He had no use for the sky-sled and he had all the uses in Shial for the coin the sham’amiilar would bring him.

Which is why he should be getting back to them. Yet he can not convince himself to back down the hill and run back to his herd, his forehead finds dirt while he inwardly calls himself a fool and then he heaves himself up to his knees, beginning to work his way down the otherside of the hill.

Hugging the struggling brush that grows up this side of the hill, not wanting to reveal himself till he ascertains the temperament of the man and whether or not he has a weapon, and keeping his eyes fixed on the figures as he descends.

By the time he is halfway down the hill he is not entirely sure how the man hasn’t heard him yet, he was quiet, and the sounds of flames do help mask any pebbles dislodging or sticks cracking, but he surely would have heard himself by now. And the other children had always said his hearing was comparatively poor when he had been young— well, they’d taunted him about how he could never catch anyone playing vava-mesya when he was the pursuer.

Spock comes to the bottom of the hill, inching his way around a few tumbled boulders and peering out over the edge.

The man is kneeling before a kindling fire, the torch laying down at his side and sending a white beam of light out from some unknown source, prodding at bits of scrub and grass Spock knows will not burn well and batting away its astrid smoke.

He is... He is strange, and familiar all the same.

The faint red light of his fire casting his face in dramatic shadow, making his hair, which is clipped short but in complete disarray, seem golden.

Sort of like impure, unpolished ingots of gold sold in bulk at the markets. Like the one he found running the quarry slopes and had carried in his pocket for years till it had fallen out an unnoticed hole.

The golden haired man’s face was rounded like the warriors of Khomi, bruised and smudged with dirt and dust, and was soft around the edges. His furrowed brow strange and abnormally perpendicular, a small and straight nose, weirdly pinkish lips pressed thin with concentration. And his ears… His _ears_ were missing their tips…

No they weren’t gone, or lost, or missing; Spock was close enough to see there was no scar tissue. They were just round, blunt little things.

‘ _Like— like Mother’s…_ ’

Spock heart must still be beating or else he’d be lying here dead now, of that he is assured as much as he is sure it had stilled, but he still has to remind himself to breathe.

‘ _Is he— Is he of Mother’s people then?_ ’

His mother was ill, impaired, sickly; her deformity was unique to her. At least, Spock thought it had been.

She was from a tiny island somewhere off the distant shores of Han-Shir; she said she had been abandoned by her people; she claimed no house, no clan, no tribe, no allegiance save Father’s. Spock had never seen another like her, not in the bustling ports or the crowded slave markets or hidden in any book… At least till now.

‘ _Calm yourself!_ ’ Yes, yes; first and foremost make your lungs work again.

He is just strange, just ill as Mother is. It is not inconceivable that someone, somewhere might have the same unfortunate deformity as her. This man is like her, he does not have any relation to her.

‘ _Nothing to lose your head over._ ’ Mere coincidence is all. It may offer commonality with this stranger, help set up a rapport… When did Spock decide he was definitely going to talk to this man?

What did he stand to gain from talking to this man? Nothing but trouble, his first curiosity is satisfied, even if a second has been awakened with the ferocity of a le-matya, and he had a herd to look after.

Soon some barbarian tribe, or pack of bandits, or Khomi border patrol would spot the smoke and come to investigate. They would strip the sled bare of anything useful and, either kill anyone, enslave anyone, or arrest and eventually execute anyone they found; respectively speaking.

Better to be as far away from here as possible and yet, Spock still sat watching.

The man’s movements were careful, prone to sudden stops and considerations, he was undoubtedly injured. Undoubtedly hurting. And the figure behind him, laying down so still in the dirt, that one’s face he could not see but he thought now it was a woman.

If he listened he could hear her breathing; quiet, stilted sort of sounds that came out at great cost. Sharp and slow pings thrumming to a different, but relatively steady beat; their source Spock did not know.

The man spits out something in an alien tongue, throwing a fragment of still smoldering brush away in frustration. He holds his head in one hand, flicking of stray fragments of a red pigment that have adhered like paint to his skin, and rubs on of his legs tiredly with the other. He does not look defeated, but he looks exhausted.

Red pigment…

Spock was going to help this man, whether reason liked it or not. No other action was excusable, he would not abandon them to whatever fate awaited. He had been taught better, at least he believed he had been taught better, and if this man knew anything about his mother’s illness he might know something to combat its effects. It wasn’t entirely for honor’s sake, he could admit that.

His mother suffered. Skin too sensitive to heat and light; a body not able to properly ration water, leaking it from her skin and her eyes; her poor memory, not able to retain the fine details of things; her lack of telepathic abilities that had frustrated him as a young child; her accelerated aging...

And Spock, as her son, had inherited some of these unfortunate realities as well. His wish to talk to this man, to help him, was as selfish as his curiosity.

He breathed, then stood, still mostly hidden behind the boulders and out of sight.

The man did notice him till Spock disrupted the strange beam of light from the torch, his head jerking up to meet Spock’s gaze with wild eyes.

The stranger snatched the torch from at his feet, shining pointedly in Spock’s direction. Spock blinked, his inner eyelid instinctively closing for a moment at the suddenness with which the bright white light appeared before he was able to coax it away. Pupils aching faintly as they contracted against the sudden change.

The beam was held in his face for a moment more, before it slowly drifted down to his chest, and he had to set there and blink more while his eyes decided what they were exactly going to do.

When his vision had completely adjusted to the change in light levels Spock found the man standing, wary and clutching the torch, which was not a torch in any sense Spock had ever known, tightly as he eyed Spock.

“Do you need any help?” Spock asked carefully.

The man just stared at him, uncomprehending or unresponsive.

“My name is Spock,” Ah, now what would the stranger think of him with no house, or clan, or declaration of parentage? A kre’nath? Vre'kasht? As correct as the stranger would be on that last point.

“I am a shepherd from Shial. I saw the— the sled fall and I came to investigate.” Spock explained. “I mean you no harm.”

The man just continued to watch him, his brow furrowing less in caution and more in confusion with each passing second. Though he still held himself in a sort of fighting stance, or as much of one as he could make in his condition.

Spock repeated his message, this time in the Khomi dialect though he had always been told his accent was atrocious. When that received no response Spock had to pause for a moment to think before trying again, this time in Han-Shir.

If the stranger is as Mother is, then maybe her native language would open communication, though he was barely conversational in that tongue and stumbled over his words like a newborn calf. He had not spoken in this for so long, Mother would be _ashamed_ if she could hear her son now.

Though it proved to be quite ineffective as he still received the undiscerning stare for all his struggling to wrap his tongue around once familiar words.

Spock felt the urge to sigh.

“My name is Spock.” He repeated, bring a slow, cautiously moving hand to his chest and patting softly. “Spock.”

The stranger watched him, watched the hand on his chest, unmoving but it seemed his grip on the torch had slackened a bit. Just a bit.

“Spock, my name is Spock.” Then he reached out and pointed at the stranger expectantly.

The man licked his lips, considering, before touching his own hand to his chest.

“Jim.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they meet.
> 
> Vulcan terms and translations:
> 
> K’karee - A species of venomous snake, it can spit it's poison several feet when aroused to strike. Not usually fatal to Vulcans but can cause complete blindness if the venom finds it way into the eyes.
> 
> El’ru-pohshayek - Literally hand gun or pistol. In this case it would be a larger weapon with a long grip and two barrels, not something a Human could effectively wield one handed due to the strength of the kick but a Vulcan is perfectly capable of shooting.
> 
> Thanar Sea - a large salt water body to the east that separates Na'Nam and Han-Shir.
> 
> T’Khut - Vulcan's sister planet. The exact nature of the planet varies in cannon/beta-cannon accounts but I consider it a tidally locked plantoid that shares a synchronous orbit with Vulcan. It possesses one moon.
> 
> Shial - a country in Na'Nam. The country Spock is from.
> 
> Vava-mesya - Literally "echo tag". Vulcan version of Marco Polo. Understandably, it's rarely if ever played in water.
> 
> Kre'nath - a bastard/illegitimate child. The literal translation is "shamed one".
> 
> Vre'kasht - exile or outcast.
> 
> Han-Shir - Vulcan's other continent. Considered to be less civilized and less populated than Na'Nam.


End file.
